


We Reap What We Are Due

by ExtraPenguin



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Bondage, Dark Side Revan - Freeform, F/F, Identity Issues, Inappropriate Use of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27776395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/pseuds/ExtraPenguin
Summary: Arra Dume, formerly a subordinate of the renowned Bastila Shan and now a Jedi padawan despite being well past the age cutoff, has been tasked with exploring ancient ruins visited by Darth Revan and Malak during their fall to the Dark Side. Yet something about the ruins seems much more familiar than it should...
Relationships: Female Revan/Bastila Shan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	We Reap What We Are Due

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



Arra Dume stared at the mound, covered in brown grass. Something stirred at the back of her mind as she gazed upon the stone pillars jutting up, tall and rectangular with slots carved out of the long edge. She didn't think she'd ever come to Dantooine before, but – there was something about the planet. Something about the grass turned brown, the blue of the sky, and the inhabitants' petty problems felt like it _should_ mean something to her. The mound and the ruins within gave her that sensation, of unwittingly stepping on the first step of a downward staircase, with even greater intensity than the rest of Dantooine.

“Arra? Is everything all right?” Bastila Shan asked.

Bastila Shan also gave her that feeling, as did the Jedi and Jedi training – when it didn't feel like second nature already. Wielding a lightsaber should not feel like muscle memory, yet it did.

“Just gathering myself. We'll be heading into danger.”

“Yes, it's … understandable,” Bastila said. “We're just padawans, following on the trail of a Sith Lord. But we must press on. The Jedi Order depends on us.”

And _why_ had the Jedi Order entrusted this mission to a pair of padawans and the ragtag misfits one of them had gathered? Weren't padawans supposed to be supervised by at least a Jedi Knight?

The door opened before her, interlocking fingers sinking into the ground and withdrawing into the ceiling. There was a small antechamber inside the mound, grey metal and grey stone, and another, less weathered door. The ruins opened to a larger chamber. In the middle of the chamber stood an alien droid.

The droid said something in a language Arra didn't recognize. “Come again?” The droid switched languages. Arra still didn't recognize it, and neither did Bastila.

A few rounds of language switches later, it said, “I can reproduce any of the languages spoken by the slaves of the Builders.”

“I recognize that language,” Arra said. A shiver ran down her spine at the mention of _slaves of the Builders_ , a distinct sensation of there being something she'd _forgotten_.

She knew biographical details of herself, knew what she was supposed to have been doing before she'd woken up on the Endar Spire, but there was a faint veneer of unreality over them. As if someone had taken a look at her file, nodded, and backfilled the empty voids of her mind with generic scenes from a generic childhood on a generic planet. She had no memories of her parents.

Bastila was interrogating the droid – the Overseer, who supervised the slaves that built the monument to the power of the Star Forge and then executed the slaves and became a servant to stray Builders who might seek knowledge of this Star Forge. The sensation of familiarity – of having known this, once – settled over Arra like a heavy cloak. This was not her first time speaking with one of these droids. Perhaps even this one.

Had she come here before? Maybe that's why they sent her with a padawan – a Jedi Knight or Master might've come with her before and been recognized, making the deception fall apart. But what did the Jedi need her for?

“What is the Star Forge?” Bastila asked.

 _It is a machine of invincible might, a tool of unstoppable conquest,_ Arra thought. The droid echoed her.

“The droid is obviously not programmed with the knowledge we seek,” Bastila said after pressing the droid didn't yield anything but a repetition of the same brief speech. “The Star Forge sounds like some type of weapon, perhaps… though, in fact, it could be anything.”

“A forge with which one makes an armada?”

“Maybe that's why the Sith were able to amass a fleet so quickly. But I suspect the Star Forge is more powerful than a mere factory.”

They continued interrogating the droid. Its answers – that it had been here for over 20 000 years, that the Builders were some extinct species that had once been the rulers of an infinite empire – shocked Bastila but felt familiar to Arra.

She'd been here before, in this very room, asking these questions and receiving the same answers. She knew this as much as she knew she had to breathe to live.

The droid spoke of Revan and Malak proving themselves worthy to unlock the secrets, and of another who hadn't and had paid the ultimate price. Master Nemo's corpse lay on the floor. It was unclear if there had been further successes after Revan but before Nemo's failure – the droid seemed to have little grasp of short-term chronology and no inclination to give more than the bare minimum of answers.

If the council had sent a Jedi Knight to investigate successfully, they would have had no qualms sending another. When that ended in failure, they would want to send the original Jedi back to regain the knowledge lost with the Jedi's amnesia.

But why would they hide everything from the Jedi, then? No, there had to be some other reason.

Arra, Bastila, and T3-M4 headed to the eastern proving ground. It proved to be another room of grey stone and pyramidal structures. _Almost like a Sith temple,_ something said. Arra Dume had never been inside a Sith temple.

“Watch out!” Bastila yelled as a droid attacked her with a flamethrower. She tried to catch it on her lightsaber, which was a good reflex but doomed to fail.

Arra let T3-M4 attempt to shock the Overseer droid's aggressive cousin as she turned on her stealth field. She stepped behind the droid and stabbed it with her lightsaber.

The droid turned its flamethrower to her next. It was perhaps logical that the power source of a droid that predated the Republic was not where it would have been for a modern unit, but the continued functioning of the droid was disappointing nonetheless.

The thing was damn tough, too. It took Arra, Bastila, and T3-M4 several minutes of thwacking to get it to fall.

“Is combat the only trial?” Bastila asked, faintly disapproving.

T3-M4 beeped at a terminal-like thing at the far end of the room. They went to investigate.

She tried to slice the system, but of course, her skills were developed on systems off by millennia. Violence and pushing buttons at random didn't work, either, so she spoke. And slotted her datapad into a glowing receptacle.

“Are you sure that's wise?” Bastila asked.

“The Force told me to do so,” Arra replied, because she was not about to discuss the echoes of memory resonating through her. If Bastila had been briefed, she might try to do something drastic to contain her. If she hadn't, well, she'd probably think Arra was going crazy.

Basic appeared on the screen. INTERROGATIVE: IDENTIFY THE THREE PRIMARY LIFE-GIVING SEED WORLD TYPES

Arra picked out Oceanic, Grassland, and Arboreal. The computer hummed. BREAKING LIFE SEAL, it said.

“Do you think the other room will be similar?” Bastila asked.

“Let's find out.”

It was almost identical. The guard droid had a freeze ray instead of a flamethrower, and the ancient terminal asked after death-giving seed world types, but nothing else changed. BREAKING DEATH SEAL, the terminal said.

Another door had opened off the main chamber. Arra led the way through.

The room was similar in size and shape to the trial chambers, but instead of a guard droid and an ancient terminal, it held a black contraption, vaguely conical in shape. Arra recognized it from the vision she'd shared with Bastila upon approach.

The thing unfurled, blossoming into a holographic map of the galaxy that reached the ceiling of the room. Arra stared at it, felt the jolt of something that should have been familiar, and tried to make sense of the stars.

“This must be what Revan and Malak found when they entered this temple,” Bastila said. “This must be where their journey down the dark side began.”

 _No, it began long before, in the Council chambers,_ something in Arra's mind said.

“I believe that is Korriban, there,” Arra said out loud. It was somehow highlighted, as were some other worlds. Kashyyyk. Tatooine. Manaan. The Star Forge was almost certainly not around any of them – well, maybe Korriban, though even that was a stretch, given how close a watch the Jedi must keep on it – but perhaps they were steps on a journey to their destination. “But the map is corrupted.”

“I know Revan and Malak visited Korriban at least once. Perhaps they discovered something more there.” Bastila stared at the Star Map once more. “We must inform the Council of what we have discovered. They must decide our next course of action, though I suspect our task has only just begun.”

They'd have to visit all the other worlds. The question was, would the Council treat it like they should and have Arra and Bastila accompany an actual Jedi, or would they hide the matter as if the two of them were an embarrassing disease and send them off in secret?

They set course for Manaan in the Ebon Hawk. No Jedi Knight or Master accompanied them. Arra couldn't quite agree with the Council's logic – a company of Jedi Knights would draw the attention of the Sith, yes, but a single one should not be more eyecatching than the ragtag bunch of misfits was.

Hyperspace brought Arra uneasy dreams. Whatever had happened to take her memories must've happened on a spaceship. Not too hard to arrange in a time of war.

 _Revan,_ the dreams whispered.

 _But first a warning, young Padawan,_ Master Vrook's voice echoed. _The lure of the dark side is difficult to resist. I fear this quest to find the Star Forge could lead you down an all too familiar path._

The Star Map slept at the bottom of an ocean.

Arra's logic for the choice was that the Overseer had spoken a dialect of ancient Selkath. The system was studiously neutral, and thus would be an easier proving ground than Korriban and its Sith Academy, or lawless Tatooine or slaver-infested Kashyyyk. It also only had one spaceport, the native Selkath preferring smaller settlements.

The view was beautiful: a cool ocean breeze ruffled her hair and robes, and the horizon was vast and far away. White clouds drifted across the sky. Arra wondered whether her actual homeworld looked like this. Devaronia's skies were a bit like it, but that was a forged memory.

She, Bastila, and Canderous walked around Ahto City. The Republic was hiring mercenaries, apparently so that the Sith wouldn't get them first, and there was something fishy about that, but Arra's first response was a flare of rage. Why? Had she had something against mercenaries?

Manaan itself was much less of a reminder of things she'd forgotten. The Selkath, despite some of them being slaves of the Builders, were unfamiliar, and the Republic presence likewise.

They ambled through the walkways to the Republic Embassy. A sense of unease hit Arra like a shot of something alcoholic.

The Embassy staff told her they might be able to help her with getting to the ocean floor – apparently they had something of a problem with a research station – and could give her access to the Sith compound if only she decrypted their passcards. Arra ran through their encryption on autopilot and sliced the Republic systems while she was doing it.

She was very good at decrypting Sith codes, had been a Jedi once, and had visited the ruins on Dantooine. Despite this, no-one seemed to recognize her, and the Jedi acted like they didn't know she'd gone to the ruins.

Had she been a Sith then? Revan and Malak sending an unassuming spy to go check on a Star Map?

The Jedi would be using her to get at her masters, then. Just like the Republic was using her to get to the probe droid they'd lost through their incompetence. At least the Selkath youth she'd chosen to aid on her own – albeit with encouragement from Bastila.

Mission accomplished, she and her team exited the Embassy. Maybe now Roland Wann would _finally_ tell her something about the Star Map.

She was greeted by a Selkath with a team of guard droids. “You there! Human! You are placed under the arrest of the Ahto City Civil Authority!”

“What? Why?” Arra asked. Last she'd checked – except that she hadn't, and consequently shouldn't know this – the Embassy was sovereign territory of the Sith Empire and Selkath laws would thus not apply within. If the Sith wanted her for war crimes or whatever, they'd just have to get her themselves.

“Though the Sith Embassy here is considered sovereign territory of the Sith Empire, we have been monitoring an alarming number of weapon discharges and detonations from within the base,” the Selkath said, and then Arra decided to let herself get arrested. The expression on Bastila and Canderous's faces made it all worth it.

A surprisingly hilarious excursion into the Selkath judicial system later, Arra was on her way to the Republic Embassy.

“I can't believe that Bwa'lass tried to claim you weren't capable of forming complex thoughts,” Bastila said, incensed.

“Well, you heard Bwa'lass speak,” Canderous replied. “I don't think _he_ was capable of forming complex thoughts.”

“Nonetheless. I'm glad we found the datapad.” Bastila frowned. “It's disturbing to hear what the Sith had planned for those children.”

“That plot has been foiled.” And she'd stood trial as well. The Sith agents on the planet would've seen her face and heard her name. The name at least must be a complete fabrication – there had been no second, hidden file on her – but the face might be close enough to her previous one that someone would recognize her. The trouble she caused would eventually escalate up the chain, and some Sith spy would approach her to probe her. She fully intended to probe the Sith right back. In the meanwhile, she'd walk the path the Jedi had set before her, if only because it was there.

The next step ended up being going down to the ocean floor to investigate an illegal kolto harvesting facility of the Republic's. Arra thought making shady backroom deals with government officials on a planet where the Republic's presence was only barely tolerated was a terrible move, but if the Republic was full of idiots, so be it.

As the submersible took them down to Hrakert Rift, Arra read the files she'd downloaded off the Embassy mainframe. No file on her, and disappointingly little on the Sith or the Jedi, too.

She joined Bastila in meditation. Next to them, Canderous cleaned his gun.

The decision to leave T3-M4 on the ship had been correct, Arra thought the moment she stepped into the station. Despite the climate control, the air was humid enough to rust bolts.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Canderous said.

Arra opened the first door. A hysterical mercenary ran past them, screaming something about the Selkath going crazy, and sheltered in the submersible, sobbing.

“It seems not only the Selkath are losing themselves,” Bastila frostily commented. “Come. We must get to the bottom of this.”

 _There are many ways to break a mind, and this station seems to have turned into a trap for doing just so,_ Arra did not say, because where would Arra Dume have learned of breaking people? It was probably not taught in archaeology classes.

But was it taught by the Sith? Arra strode down the walkway, observing the large firaxan sharks circling around the station like they smelled blood in the water. Water dripped from the ceiling. Not a leak to the outside at these depths – the station would've been rent apart – but coolant or drinking water pipes with gaps in them. She held her lightsaber at the ready as she picked around the puddles.

“What'd the Republic find down here anyway?” Canderous wondered. “They trying to train those sharks to take out the Sith?”

“Not everything is about war and combat,” Bastila replied, like a padawan taught that the Jedi were peaceful before being sent to wage a war.

Arra found a terminal. A bit of slicing revealed it had access to a series of cameras around the facility. She looked through, saw crazed Selkath jittering about erratically and hostile guard droids in the corridors.

There was also a gas vent system. She used it without remorse.

“You killed them,” Bastila hissed.

“Could you have saved them?” Arra replied. It'd take a few more minutes for the gas to clear. She could entertain Bastila for a while longer.

“Could've faced them in combat,” Canderous said. “That'd have been much more exciting.”

“You must resist the influence of the dark side! It is everything we are fighting against! This is doubly important for you, with your natural affinity for the Force!”

Arra sighed. “Would getting injured hacking up those Selkath bring us any closer to the light?”

“Our destinies are intertwined,” Bastila insisted. “Everything one of us does will have consequences for the other. Any reckless behavior on your part is likely to affect me as well.”

“You managed to kill Darth Revan. You confronted the greatest darkness in the galaxy and did not Fall.”

Bastila's expression grew pinched. “It's true that, due to my Battle Meditation, I was with the Jedi strike team that boarded Revan's ship. We did not kill Revan, however.”

“Who did?”

“Our mission was to capture Revan, if possible. It was Malak who turned on his own master, firing upon Revan's ship while we were still on board it. It was his desire to kill us and his master both. Thankfully we narrowly escaped the vessel as it exploded.”

“Had you succeeded in capturing Revan alive, what would you have done?”

“The Jedi do not believe in killing their prisoners. No one deserves execution, no matter what their crimes,” Bastila said, dodging the question. “Remember that Revan and Malak were once great Jedi. Heroes in every sense of the word. They demonstrate the danger of the dark side to us all.” She swallowed. “I'm sorry. We really shouldn't speak of this anymore. The memory of my confrontation with Revan is… painful. Let's return to the mission, please.”

“The gas should have dispersed by now,” Arra agreed. 

They went deeper into the station. The droids in the hallways started shooting at them at sight, and there were a number of insane Selkath who'd escaped the gas who were trying to murder them as well. Bastila attempted diplomacy; they had to use an antidote kit to cure the poisoning she received as a reward. Canderous told stories of facing down the Jedi Revan on the battlefield and losing.

At the west end of the facility, they found an experimental sonic emitter that promised to kill the firaxan sharks prowling in the water. Combing the facility revealed no answers to the question of why the Selkath had gone insane, no control systems of any sort, and only one enviro suit.

“Only one of us can go,” Bastila said. “As the most senior Jedi-”

“I will go,” Arra interrupted her. She stared her down. “After all, the Star Maps respond to _me_.”

“I-” Bastila swallowed her objections with a sour face. “Of course.”

The capitulation was faster than expected but more than welcome. Arra nodded and headed for the airlock. “Clear out the facility of hostiles and escort survivors to the submersible.”

“Yessir,” Canderous said.

With that, Arra left the northern half of Hrakert Station.

It was slow going in the envirosuit under the weight of the entire ocean. One of the mercenaries the Republic had hired had made it out and said he was heading out to the kolto harvester at the rift which had overrides for the submarine bay. Bypassing the masses of crazed Selkath from the outside was a remarkably smart move from a weakling who didn't even have the Force to help slaughter his enemies.

Of course, then the idiot got himself eaten by a shark. Ah well.

Arra walked across the ocean floor, trying to match landmarks to what she'd seen in the vision. Nothing much, though she was a way away from the rift yet.

 _Revan,_ something whispered. The Star Map must be nearby.

She'd need more than two Star Maps to find the location of the Star Forge. She could probably claim this Star Map was more damaged than it actually was, and keep herself a step ahead of the Jedi Council whose voice and eyes Bastila was. Juhani was reporting to them too, of course, and Carth to the Republic Admiralty. The others' masters were less of a certainty and more of an opportunity.

Grasses swayed in the gentle currents stirred up by the depth-loving firaxan sharks. One approached her, mouth open. She fired the sonic emitter. Its corpse floated still in the gloom, sinking towards the sediments.

The Force whispered, and she fired the sonic emitter behind herself. She felt the spark of life let go from another shark.

She thought of the worms and bacteria hidden in the silt. Most of them must've been scraped off with the silt when the base was being built, but the ones that endured would now be getting a veritable feast. Two firaxan sharks, large beasts from waters above, downed the same day. Worms would find them and feed on them. The sharks would become one with the Force through their corpses being repurposed by other creatures and returning to the food chain as disparate bits and pieces of flesh and sinew. The Force was death and the Force was decay.

Eventually, she found a pressure door. She was glad to shed the weight of the ocean and the cumbersome form of the envirosuit.

An insane Selkath skittered out from behind a pile of storage containers, armed only with its claws. Arra drew on the Force to vault out of the lower half of the envirosuit faster and higher than a human should be able to jump and only barely managed to evade the Selkath's venomous claws.

Her lightsaber rose to her hand with ease. She called on the blade and brilliant yellow stabbed through the Selkath's heart.

Its corpse fell to the floor with a wet thud as she turned her lightsaber off. Once again, violence had solved all her problems.

This facility was smaller. She walked through a few more doors and short corridors before finding a force field. A pair of survivors, armed with vibroblades, stood behind it.

“I'm the rescue squad,” Arra said. “What happened?”

“No – no, you can't come in here! You'll let the firaxans and the Selkath in!” the man yelled. “No – stay out! Stay out!”

Arra raised an eyebrow. “The firaxans are _fish_. Unless they suddenly become capable of breathing air we have nothing to worry about.”

“I won't let you open the door for those monsters to get in!” the man continued, undeterred by logic and reason. “I'll stop you! I'll suck all the pressure out of the chamber! That'll stop you!” Then he did something with a terminal, and-

The air was leaving the room Arra was in. She felt a frisson of panic – an instinctual, human thing – and reached into the minds before her. “You _will_ stop this,” she growled.

“No! No! The firaxans will get us! No! The Selkath are coming! No!” the man screamed.

He was resisting. How _dare_ he. Arra saw red. “ _Stop the depressurization sequence,_ ” she said, her hand curling up in front of her as the man rose, feet kicking uselessly at the air as he clawed at the invisible hand of the Force that held him in a death grip.

Air flooded back into the chamber. Arra gasped, suddenly light-headed, and dropped the lifeless corpse of the man.

The woman took a step back from the man's body. “No… No…”

Arra took another glad breath. “Tell me what happened,” she said with the Force as her envoy.

“No! No!” the woman said, grasping her head and _resisting_. “This… this monster rose up from the Rift… It was like it was screaming inside my head…”

She fully pierced through the resistance. Arra dove through them with little heed for the damage she left in the woman's mind.

Work teams had been outside, in the Rift, when a rumbling came, splitting open the heads of the research team, heralding the rise of a monster from the depths. It looked like a firaxan, but larger, larger than even the submersible. It screamed, and the Selkath screamed with it, turning on their comrades and losing their selves. The regular firaxans congregated around it, circling and schooling as if around chum in the water.

Little pieces of speculation drifted past – that the shark was feeding on kolto, had a lair near the kolto vent the station had almost reached, that the other firaxan sharks were its children – but the only thing Arra cared about was the ruins next to the vent. There was also something about a chemical that would kill the sharks, but no tests had been done on how it affected the kolto. The two survivors had been planning to dump it in the ocean anyway on the offhand hope it would kill the shark.

“You kriffing idiots,” Arra said as she let the woman's body drop.

If anyone asked, they'd been too close to the source of the screams, and their brains had been scrambled, hence the blood from the nose and mouth. Give it a few hours and Bastila wouldn't be able to tell a thing. No Jedi would return to take a look.

The Force pulled at her. She left the facility and lumbered across the ocean floor, towards the control systems of the kolto harvesting machinery. The large shark loomed just past it, and beyond the shark, Arra felt the distinct pull of something half-forgotten. The Star Map.

She stopped at the machinery. The shark had most definitely not been there when they built it, so the machinery must be responsible for attracting its ire.

It was a shame they hadn't built any convenient self-destruct or retrieval routine into the machinery. The only means of destroying it Arra could find was fiddling around with the fuel injectors, circumventing all the safety parameters to overpressurize the fuel and make the thing explode.

All things considered, it was a pretty explosion. Arra listened with bated breath to any warnings the Force might give her, but the large shark did not grow agitated at the explosion. It slowly swam away into the murk.

Only one thing left for Arra to do. She walked over the wire-mesh drawbridge to the other side of the Rift.

The Star Map sat there like an obsidian flower yet to bloom. Arra reached out into the Force, and it blossomed before her, cradling the blue-yellow map of the galaxy within its petals as it slowly spun.

Korriban, Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Tatooine … and another marker, somewhere in the Tempered Wastes of the Unknown Regions. Not enough data to plot a course, but intriguing. The Tempered Wastes was a stretch of space poor in stars; there wasn't much there. And the Unknown Regions were broad and unexplored enough she could tell Bastila and company that the Star Forge was in the Unknown Regions, but she hadn't been able to figure out the precise location from the damaged Star Map. It even had the benefit of being true, should Bastila be more skilled in the art of lie detecting than a padawan had any right to be.

It was interesting that Arra knew what a padawan should be capable of. After all, she had only been a padawan herself for a scant few weeks.

“Have I been here before?” she murmured to the Star Map.

It did not answer. The marked stars of the map continued their circuit around the galactic core.

“Tell me!” she yelled, suddenly overtaken by frustration. “What happened to me?”

She slammed her hand on the hologram. It wasn't a ray shield set on solid, so her hand passed right through, and-

Bastila, on a starship, lightsaber agleam. An explosion rocked the ship. Arra was on her back on the floor.

Hesitantly, Bastila extinguished her lightsaber and knelt by Arra's side. Arra was wearing a mask of some sort, or perhaps a helmet, so when Bastila reached out, she did not touch skin. 

A memory of Bastila Shan saying something to Arra on Dantooine. “What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause? To use their own knowledge against them?”

Arra was again lying on her back on the exploding spaceship. Static filled her head.

Insistent beeping. Something was flashing red.

Arra came to in an envirosuit that had fallen over onto its front and had half-buried itself in the ocean floor. The beeping and flashing lights were the warning that there was only half an hour of air left at current consumption.

With a groan, she rolled onto her side and levered herself to her feet. Had she really been out here that long? She hadn't checked the levels when she'd set out, and while the oceans of Manaan were fairly shallow, it was impossible to tell time by the paltry amounts of sunlight that might penetrate the waters near the Hrakert Rift. At least she hadn't been eaten by a firaxan.

Half an hour should be enough time to get back inside. She wiped the muck off the helmet as best she could and started the slow walk back.

The giant shark was nowhere to be seen, and even the firaxans had retreated to waters closer to the surface. The Force was altered as well, calm and settled where previously it had been agitated and on edge.

 _Five minutes of air left at current consumption,_ the indicator now read. Arra was nowhere near the facility. 

_Still your breathing, let the trace amounts of air in your lungs hold you. The Force can sustain you… listen to it. Let it keep you alive until you can reach safety._

“Master?” Arra whispered. But the voice was not of any of the Jedi Masters of Dantooine, or anyone she remembered. The woman had belonged to her erased life.

Arra let go of her worries and surrendered to the Force. She was and wasn't, in control of and at the mercy of the Force that let her move amidst the sea-grass without breathing. _Fifteen minutes of air left at current consumption,_ the indicator said now.

It did not budge as Arra trodded all the way to the larger facility where Bastila and Canderous waited. Her original master's teachings had served her well – even if they hadn't prevented Bastila from mind wiping her.

“Oh good, there you are!” Bastila said the moment Arra opened the seal on the envirosuit. “I was afraid something had happened.”

“Did you find the Star Map?” Canderous asked.

“I did,” Arra said. “We'll discuss things further on the Ebon Hawk.”

“What took you so long?” Bastila demanded.

Arra shrugged. “Trying to get anywhere in an envirosuit is akin to a moving meditation on patience.”

Bastila made an understanding noise while Canderous looked confused. Kriff. She'd slipped out something from her previous training. Hopefully Bastila was so immersed in the ways of the Jedi she wouldn't know that Arra hadn't been taught more than the basic breathing exercises.

“There was some extraction machinery in the Rift that had upset a large shark,” Arra added as they cautiously made their way back towards the submersible. “After I destroyed the machinery, the shark stopped letting out the screams that rallied the firaxans and crazed the Selkath.”

“Force sensitivity is not always restricted to sentients,” Bastila started explaining, ostensibly for Canderous's benefit but more likely because she enjoyed hearing herself talk. “Some animals have an increased connection to the Force, often leading them to live longer, grow larger, and potentially have powers like those Arra observed. In fact-”

Arra held up a hand. “Careful.”

Canderous and Bastila exchanged a glance and put their hands on their weapons. Arra opened the pressure door.

The short frame of Calo Nord greeted them. “I have to give you credit… you've led me on quite a chase. But nobody gets away from Calo Nord in the end!”

“I see you brought some back up, Calo,” Canderous taunted him. “Realized we were a bit much to handle on your own, eh?”

“You got lucky on Taris; the Sith attack saved you from a quick and gruesome death. But I promise you, the Sith won't be getting in my way this time!”

Arra, however, was still left with questions. “…how the kriff did you get down here?”

“You underestimate me; there's other ways down here besides the Republic subs. A small vessel with the right weapons can blast a path right through those firaxan sharks. Once I got down to the ocean floor all I had to do was come here and wait. I knew you'd come back this way eventually.”

“Let's just skip to the bit where I stick a lightsaber through your chest,” Arra sighed.

“As if you could ever get that close,” Calo Nord scoffed and drew his blasters with an unnecessarily elaborate twirl.

Arra reflected the bolts back at him and his four thugs. She wondered whether she could kill them just by reflecting their bolts back at them, but then one of the thugs tossed a grenade at her and she decided she'd rather stuff a lightsaber through their faces.

Four decapitated thugs and one bisected Calo Nord later, Arra turned off her lightsaber. “Hopefully he won't bother us again.”

Canderous poked at the left half of Calo Nord's corpse with his foot. “It'd be a miracle if he did.”

“We should go,” Bastila said, obviously disapproving of the sai tok.

They encountered no trouble on the way to the submersible, though Calo Nord had gotten to the one mercenary who'd survived the crazed Selkath. Arra engaged the autopilot and pretended to meditate.

Who had Arra Dume been before she became Arra Dume?

The Star Map must have unlocked the memory of her losing her memories. Bastila. Bastila was the key. Bastila had been there, had taken her memories, her very identity. She knew who Arra had been. She'd been sent over to keep an eye on Arra.

But why? Arra had been a Sith. A potential exercutioner lest she defect back? A true attempt at redeeming her?

“We're almost there,” Canderous interrupted her train of thoughts.

Their submersible rose to the surface in the Republic Embassy. They were immediately accosted by Roland Wann.

“You have returned! I was beginning to fear that you, too, might have been lost. Did you find out what had happened down there at the facility?” he asked.

For a moment, Arra considered Force choking the idiot a bit, but there were too many witnesses. Instead, she'd have to channel Bastila. “Your irresponsible actions disturbed a huge, ancient shark who drove all the Selkath insane and stirred up the firaxans. Thankfully, I managed to figure it out and settle the shark by destroying the harvesting machine.” She cast a sidelong glance at Bastila.

“No! That is terrible. That will set our work back years…” He sighed. “It may even cost us the war.”

“If we win a war through immoral deeds, we will have lost the true war within our hearts and minds,” Bastila said in that disapprovingly snooty tone that came so easily to her, and continued to lecture him on morality for several long minutes. Arra tried not to look too smug when taking in the expression on Roland Wann's face.

“We should go to the next place on our itinerary,” Canderous pointed out the moment Bastila paused for breath.

Roland Wann looked grateful. “Yes, I'm sure you Jedi have many places to go,” he added. “You certainly shouldn't stay here on my behalf.”

Arra raised a sardonic eyebrow, but let herself be escorted out.

Right into a Selkath judicial team. “Hello,” she said. “Am I eligible for a Doonium Card membership of the judiciary holding cells yet?”

The Selkath officer was not amused. “We have detected a number of underwater detonations coming from the vicinity of the Hrakert Rift. You have been known to have asked questions about this, and our spy monitors in the Republic Embassy recorded you leaving in a submersible that descended to the Hrakert Rift. You will come with us immediately to answer for your actions, or we will be forced to take you by force!”

“Fine, I'll come,” Arra said with a roll of her eyes. After all, the Republic was the ones who'd take the fall for this. She, Arra Dume – or whoever she'd been before Bastila got to her – was a Sith, and had destroyed the harvester thing. “Do I get Bwa'lass as my representative again?”

It turned out that she didn't get Bwa'lass trying to claim she was incapable of complex thought and should not be held responsible for the complex thoughts she'd had. Instead, half the judges had been in on the Republic's research station – apparently, they'd been trying to figure out how to syntesize kolto – and the giant firaxan was a figure of myth called the Progenitor, and hypothesized to be the source of the kolto. Arra nodded in the appropriate places, made note of the gratitude the judges showed her, and left, happy to shake the salt crust of the world from her feet. Hopefully the Ebon Hawk hadn't corroded beyond use.

Korriban and its Sith she'd tackle only when she knew who she had been. That left Kashyyyk and Tatooine.

Arra decided she needed time to recover from the water sea before heading out for the Dune Sea and punched in the coordinates for Kashyyyk. They'd need a few days to get there, but she intended to use them well.

“How are you?” Arra asked when she'd managed to get Bastila alone in one of the dormitories.

“I am … slightly shaken, I suppose,” Bastila said. “I can't believe the Republic would do such shady things just for the sake of kolto! We are not the Sith. We should be better than that.”

“It's enough to make one doubt the Republic,” Arra quietly said. Bastila couldn't have been working for the Sith when she wiped Arra's mind, so if she doubted the Republic and the Jedi, she might let more slip.

“I am afraid so,” Bastila said, then launched into another of her moralizing lectures. Arra learned nothing but patience.

_“I did not expect you to come.”_

_Master Zhar smiled sadly. “Regardless of her failings, Arren Kae served the Jedi well for years. And I know how hard it is to light a pyre for one's teacher.”_

_The pyre, like so many others, would be empty. The Mass Shadow Generator of Surik's had ended the war but left no corpses behind. “I haven't been her padawan for a long while.”_

_Master Zhar reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “I know,” he said, still wearing the same sad smile._

Arra realized that when she had come to Dantooine, Master Zhar had recognized her. He'd been her champion and Master in Jedi training – but only the second time around.

 _“But first a warning, young Padawan,”_ Master Vrook said. _“The lure of the dark side is difficult to resist. I fear this quest to find the Star Forge could lead you down an all too familiar path.”_

She had been a Sith. Revan had joined the Mandalorian Wars five years ago; a good decade older than Bastila, Arra was old enough to have joined from the start.

_“What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause? To use their own knowledge against them?”_

Who was known by all yet recognized by none? Someone who wore a mask and rarely spoke.

“Kriff,” she whispered at the ceiling.

The night's vision of the Star Map on Kashyyyk did not whisper her name. She felt it echo in the bottom of her soul regardless.

In the morning, Bastila was none the wiser about her prisoner's – her _victim's_ , and oh how Revan hated that the word applied to her – revelations. “Another vision. The Force is guiding us, helping us retrace the steps of Malak and his old Master. Leading us ever closer to the Star Forge.”

“Is it some Jedi thing to not say the names of the dead?” Revan said, serene as Master Kae had taught her to be. “I have heard Darth Revan's name before, including from your lips.”

“No, I-” Bastila sighed. “Never mind. Kashyyyk is a lush but simple and undeveloped world. I would not have expected to find the alien technology of a Star Map here.”

“The Wookiees live high in the wroshyr trees' branches, far from the ground. Onto the bravest of their warriors descend to the surface.” Revan sipped her morning caf. “If the Star Map is on the forest floor, it's no surprise if they don't know of its existence. After all, it will have been there for over twenty millennia.”

“That is … yes, I can see that. You know a lot about Kashyyyk.”

Revan shrugged. “I've talked to Zaalbar.” She hadn't.

Bastila looked shocked, as if she'd managed to forget that there was a Wookiee on board. While she herself was much more interesting prey, Zaalbar _stank_ enough to make that quite the achievement. “That is wise of you.”

“We'll take him with when we set out.”

“Of course,” Bastila said, nodding as if she were the one in charge. She never had been, not even when Revan had still been just Arra Dume with nary a flicker of the dark side eating at her heart.

Zaalbar joined them with a heavy heart but did not need to be convinced. The Czerka Corporation dockmaster came to hassle them over docking fees. Arra used the Force to get out of paying it.

“The Force should not be used for profit and personal gain,” Bastila whispered. “As Jedi we should be above such things.”

“I'm not giving my money to slavers,” Revan replied after the dockmaster had gone away.

“I … suppose that's a valid principle,” Bastila conceded.

“They have enough money already,” Zaalbar said.

They followed Zaalbar's directions along the wooden walkways. The moon was bright above them and the Force fought with itself: the trees exuded harmony beneath the star-studded sky, and the road was paved with the screams of the enslaved.

Bastila's disquiet was loud against even that. “You're curious about something,” Arra said.

“Am I so transparent? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, considering our bond. Yes, there is something I would like to ask, if you'll permit it.”

 _Our “bond"? No, my shackles,_ Revan hissed. _Wait,_ Arra thought. A chain could be used to pull both ways, after all. “Go ahead,” she said.

“I have watched you during our travels,” Bastila said. “You are a true servant of the light, you follow the tenets of the Jedi Order despite the lure of the dark side. And with so little training.” She sighed. “For me it has always been a constant battle. Don't you find it difficult at all? You make it seem so easy. Or is that only an illusion?”

Revan should have been awarded a medal for not roaring with laughter. “I just do what is right,” she said with an admirably level expression.

“And that's enough for you? If only it were as easy for me. If only the right path was always clear.”

If this was over the kolto on Manaan, Bastila was being a colossal idiot. Well, perhaps the destruction of the Republic machinery might've been harder for someone who gave a kriff about the Republic, but the other options were the potential destruction of all kolto and inability to complete the actual mission they'd been on. Even Bastila would've figured out the right thing to do. “Oh?”

“I've always struggled for control over my passions. I've always been too quick to anger, too quick to get involved. My instructors constantly berated me for it. I've often dreamed that I might be able to confront Darth Malak myself. I dream I can use all this power I have to kill him and stop all the death and destruction. I just think about all the evil that the Sith have caused and I… I get so furious. Yet we are told that these feelings are the path to the dark side.”

Chains pulled both ways, Revan thought smugly. “I think, if it were me, I would accept whatever harm would befall me if my actions served the greater good.”

“That is a dangerous path to walk down, Arra,” Zaalbar said. “I have seen many say that, only to become what they swore to defeat.”

“Exactly!” Bastila said. “I shouldn't even be asking you this. The Jedi teachings are clear; who am I to question them? And even worse, who am I to try and make you question them?”

“Temptation fills the galaxy,” Arra said.

“Please, forget I ever mentioned this. Let's just return to our mission.”

“Very well. Zaalbar, do you think we'll get any trouble?”

Zaalbar explained that he _was_ trouble as they walked past a Czerka outpost. It was like in a parable Revan had been told in the crèche: a brother attacked a brother in a taboo manner, and the father stopped them. Unlike in the moral tales the Jedi told, however, Freyyr had not asked himself what could have made Zaalbar use claws against his brother, and had left Chuundar's collusion with slavers undiscovered.

The walkway beyond the outpost was filled with kinrath. Revan swung her lightsaber through their pitiful bodies and drank the death of her enemies.

Zaalbar's home village was nearby. The moment they reached the gates, Zaalbar was escorted to the court of his brother. Revan considered leaving him, but the life bond was a chain keeping Zaalbar by her side, and chains pulled both ways.

Chuundar was proud, flanked by slavers and boasting of how he'd managed to shape the minds of his people. Decent enough manipulation, Revan supposed, though he was much too free with the truth. That'd be what brought him down. Sooner rather than later – after all, he was holding something of Revan's.

And he wanted something from Arra Dume. Bastila argued against it, but Arra elbowed her in the ribs and accepted.

“Why are we working for someone who would sell his people to slavery?” Bastila demanded once they were outside the village. “Sometimes I don't understand your decisions at all!”

“We need to visit the Shadowlands anyway,” Arra reminded her. “We'll find the Star Map under cover of finding this mad-claw, and see if this supposed mad-claw can help us unseat Chuundar or free Zaalbar. Take the long view, Bastila.”

“Yes, I suppose that is wise,” Bastila said. She sighed. “Will this ever grow easier? We have such an important mission, yet everyone sees fit to make demands of our time on pointless little quests! It makes me furious.”

“‘Padawan Gyw'iik asked Master Vor Isan, “If a million objects come to you, what should you do?”’”

Bastila bent her head. She remembered the koan, then.

Revan continued with the other half nonetheless. “‘Master Isan answered, “A green article is not yellow. A long thing is not short. Each object manages its own fate. Why should I interfere with them?” Padawan Gyw'iik bowed in homage.’”

“I know I should meet things as they come, but it is so hard not to worry!”

“This is why we meditate: to practice letting go of our worries.”

“For someone who has been a Jedi for even less-” Bastila swallowed her words. “I'm sorry. I should not bring up your training.”

“‘Master Barad Urr was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to a florist, “Give me the best flower you have.”’”

“I _know_ I shouldn't compare myself to others!” Bastila said.

“‘“Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the florist. “You can not find any flower that is not the best.”’ A kinrath is the best as a kinrath, and a rancor is the best as a rancor. Your responsibility as a Jedi is to be the best Bastila Shan, not the best Arra Dume.” Had she had a padawan of her own at some point, or had Malak been particularly dense? Or perhaps she'd simply enjoyed the koans for their own sake. None of the options rang with forgotten truths. A meditation for later.

“I will try,” Bastila said. “Thank you.”

She trusted Revan. The upcoming betrayal would be all the more delicious for it.

They encountered a Wookiee hunting party on their way to the basket that'd bring them down to the forest floor. A bit of persuasion later, the leader of the hunting party revealed that he wasn't happy with Chuundar, even if he couldn't do anything about it due to the chains of tradition. Arra smiled gently at a chastened Bastila.

The Wookiee in charge of the basket drop barely tolerated their presence and saw fit to say to. He also claimed the Shadowlands would treat their soft feet as an insult or something. Revan ignored him and poked at Bastila through the bond so she would as well.

Descending through the wroshyr trees was almost meditative. The moonlight filtering through the trees grew ever weaker until they were fully in the shadow. The Shadowlands was an apt name for the forest floor.

“What do you think we will find here?” Bastila asked, once they and the Wookiee basket-keeper had gone in different directions.

The grasses – knee-high things with narrow stems and a cylindrical tuft at the top, washed colorless by the gloom – swayed with the remnants of a breeze. “Darkness.” Revan turned around, reaching out with the force. “Perhaps the light.”

Bastila looked hesitant and gripped her lightsaber tightly. “Do you mean the dark side?”

“Though the Star Maps are not creations of the Sith, there is a certain darkness to them in the Force.” Revan shrugged. “But no. The light that touches the treetops doesn't reach down here, leaving us in the dark. However, there is a pack of katarns over there, and they are not cave creatures: they need light to see.” She smiled. “So let's see if there might be something bioluminescent down here.”

“We didn't see anything bioluminescent in the vision,” Bastila said, but obediently followed.

“The Force whispers to me,” Arra said. It was truthful enough – though the Force was telling her to go in the other direction.

They came across a pack of katarns. With just the two of them, it took longer than usual to dispatch them, but if a Jedi was a weapon of mass distruction, a Sith was even more so. They were all alone on the forest floor soon enough.

Revan led them a bit further away, away from any Wookiee hunting grounds into a place void of animals and their sounds. Mushrooms grew on the trunk of a wroshyr tree, lighting it up in a pattern of pale blue light. She stopped.

“What is this place?” Bastila asked. She went cross-eyed for a moment, sinking into the Force. “I don't sense anything.”

“Someplace we won't be interrupted,” Revan said as she stalked up to Bastila. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of course!” Bastila said, indignant. “You are Arra Dume, a Republic soldier under my command who turned out to be Force sensitive and is now a Jedi padawan assisting me in my mission to gather the Star Maps and find Malak's superweapon.”

Revan used the Force to throw her against the base of the wroshyr tree. A few mushrooms fell to the ground. “But I am not under your command,” she said, placid as a shallow pond.

“The Jedi Council gave _me_ this mission!” Bastila objected. She tried to squirm out of Revan's Force grip unsuccessfully.

“Did they?”

“Of course! They… they…” Doubt crept onto her expression in the face of Revan's calm certainty. “It's a joint mission?” she croaked when Revan pushed at her mind with the Force.

“Mm. Which of us can open the Star Maps?” Revan asked with deceptive softness.

Bastila choked on a sob. “I don't understand! Why would the Council send you with me? I'm supposed to unlock my full potential, but I'm stuck here babysitting you. They've been holding me back because they knew one day I would surpass them all! They gladly use my battle meditation in their wars, but I'm still treated like a child!”

Oh, there were many faults with the Jedi Council, but Bastila had hit upon none of them. Expect the fact that it was she, prideful padawan, babysitting a mind-wiped Darth Revan, not someone like Master Vandar who might be aware of the various warning signs Revan was currently displaying. “Pride is not the Jedi way,” Revan sweetly said.

“How can you be such a perfect Jedi?!” Bastila demanded, seemingly unaware that a perfect Jedi would not be holding this conversation while holding her pinned to a tree with the Force.

“There's a bond between us, Bastila,” Revan said, walking closer. “Surely you've seen the shadows in my mind?”

Bastila swallowed. Revan didn't let the sadistic glee show on her face as Bastila radiated out her doubts. “I … yes. But you resist them so well! It's as if you don't even have them!”

“The way of the Jedi is to rise above our faults,” Revan said with a smile. There were many ways to make a Jedi Fall: making them feel they were worse at being a Jedi than Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith was novel but no less exciting. Even if using a Force bond to spy on the target felt like cheating.

“But I have so many of them!” Bastila exclaimed, all humiliated rage and self-doubt, and at that moment, Revan decided she did not want to make her Fall. She wanted to _destroy_ her.

Revan stroked Bastila's cheek. “Let me help,” she said. “After all, the bond goes both ways. And you wouldn't want to drag me into the darkness, would you?”

“No,” Bastila choked out around a sense of failure.

Really, the situation was absurd. Revan smiled gently to cover the urge to guffaw. She brought Bastila down almost to the ground, grasped her chin, and kissed her. Bastila had little talent; no matter. Revan could teach her if she ever saw the need.

“We shouldn't,” Bastila panted the moment their lips parted. “The Council would throw us out!”

The mind-wiped Darth Revan? Well, maybe the failure of a handler, but the Council wouldn't let Revan out of their grasp. Revan kept on her placid smile. “Oh? So you do trust the Council's opinon?”

“No!” Bastila objected. “They're wrong, but I- I don't-”

“You don't what?” This was perhaps a bit too easy – one lonesome padawan with issues against a Jedi Master turned Sith Lord – but there was scant other prey to be found.

“I don't know,” Bastila croaked.

“Then let me teach you,” Revan whispered and kissed the corner of Bastila's jaw.

Bastila let out a broken noise and surrendered to the bonds. Revan grinned against Bastila's skin and bit her throat. She was rewarded with a whimper.

As for what she wanted … she leaned back and considered. Bastila had scrunched her eyes closed, as if not looking at what was going on would make it more acceptable somehow. Through the bond, Revan could sense the war of pride and shame with the desire to yield, and a resolution not to react as if this were her Trials and to react would be to fail – but not all responses of the body were voluntary.

Her hands were pinned down next to her hips. Revan gently pried them up so they were above her head, knocking off the occasional mushroom as she did so, then moved her a bit further down.

“What are you doing?” Bastila asked.

“Relax,” Revan whispered against her neck.

Bastila's tabards were all one piece, but the bodysuit beneath was actually a shirt and leggings sealed together. Revan opened up the seam at the waist and snaked a hand down Bastila's underwear.

“You're already wet,” Revan commented approvingly.

“I'm not!” Hot shame burst out from Bastila to go with the hot liquid gushing out of her.

“Shh.” Revan smiled, sickly sweet. “There's nothing wrong with wanting to let someone else make the decisions for a while. After all, you doubt the ones you make, don't you?”

Bastila choked on a sob. Revan pressed a knuckle against her clit and made her cry out.

“That's right, make some noise,” she whispered against Bastila's ear as she slowly rubbed the knuckle across Bastila's clit. “Let me hear it all.”

“Bu- Ah!” Bastila jerked when Revan nudged upwards.

That reminded her. She crowded against Bastila so that one of her legs was pinned between Revan's. Revan rocked her hips against Bastila; a familiar tang of pleasure jolted out from her clit. She felt an appreciative noise be dragged out of her throat and bit Bastila's jaw hard enough to bruise.

Bastila squirmed uselessly against the inexorable push of the Force as Revan rubbed against her while rubbing her clit. “Let me go,” she gasped.

“No.”

Revan worked a fingertip under Bastila's clitoral hood to touch the actual nub of clit. Bastila's chest heaved, breasts pushing against Revan's bicep, and Revan decided to demonstrate just what the Force could be used for.

She stopped her own motion for a moment to concentrate. She kept one hand curled up at Bastila's clit, Bastila subconsciously trying to move her hips against it, and reached out into the Force so that it curled against Bastila's skin, like a thousand hands against her throat, breasts, thighs, drowning her in their staticky caress.

Bastila shuddered and jerked, towards and away from each and every touch, and a shiver ran up Revan's spine at the echoes of sensation that traveled through their bond. She pressed in more firmly with the Force and curled her hand against Bastila's clit.

The orgasm was a bright shockwave in the Force, radiating out as Bastila dropped her shields and self and pushed her pleasure outward. Revan let it wash over herself and felt a smaller orgasm of her own crest in response.

She extracted her hand from Bastila's underwear and stepped back after wiping it clean on Bastila's leggings. Revan took a moment to observe Bastila – her shaking limbs, the panting breaths, the jaw hanging loosely open – and let her go. She collapsed into a heap on the forest floor. The bluish glow of the mushrooms landed on her back like judgement.

Revan let a smug grin of satisfaction rise to her face now that Bastila was too preoccupied to notice. That had felt good – and not just in the physical realm. Ripping someone apart was fun. It had been much too long since she got to do that.

When Bastila finally groaned and started to come out of her fugue state, Revan discreetly used the Force to dry her own underwear before it got all sticky and arranged her face in the serene expression of a Jedi Master.

“We should get going,” Bastila said as she clambered up onto shaking legs. Revan didn't react, but she looked embarrassed regardless.

There was little left here with which to torment Bastila. And the best destructions were those that happened in slow motion. “The Star Map is in this direction,” Revan said and led the way down a different path to the one they'd arrived on. Bastila didn't ask how she knew, too busy being ashamed of herself.

Shame came from pride, and Revan would tear down that pride and grind it under her heel until there was nothing left of Bastila Shan but a broken shell of a padawan. Then … Revan had many options. Simple death would be too easy, but perhaps if she waited for a suitable moment to execute Bastila before witnesses? Or she could go for poetic justice and scrub Bastila of her memories, perhaps turning her into a Sith assassin to go with Darth Bandon.

If she turned Bastila into an assassin, she realized, she could send her to strike the Jedi Council and show them exactly what they had wrought. They wouldn't strike her down – the Jedi did not believe in killing their opponents – but even if they could restore her, she'd still have to live with the memories of what she'd done as Revan's assassin. She might even strike down a Council member or two.

Yes, that sounded appealing. Revan projected serenity to hide the predatory grin rising on her face. Destroying one brittle Jedi padawan wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but she had lost much as of late, and this was a project she could do from the shadows while she pretended to be a pawn of the Council to keep access to their resources.

The Star Map called to her, and she let the dark side guide her steps. Soon. Soon she would be the Dark Lord of the Sith once more. And then they would all regret what they had done.


End file.
